Free Republic

On Friday, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone announced in a letter addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that she is not to present herself for Holy Communion. This comes as she professes to be a “devout Catholic” despite her support for abortion, in direct contradiction of teachings of the Catholic Church. As the archbishop said in his announcement, he has made several efforts to steer Pelosi in the right direction before it came to this. Archbishop Cordileone referenced the numerous attempts in tweeting a link to the announcement also pointing to “the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she...

This year’s RNC featured some of the strongest and most powerful pro-life voices in American politics. From Abby Johnson’s moving testimony, to Nicholas Sandmann’s pro-life speech and Sister Deirdre Byrne’s religious witness, the Republican Party in 2020 exhibits the courage to unabashedly defend the rights and the dignity of the unborn. Pro-life Americans need to pay attention. In this November’s election, the right to life is very much at stake. Our votes will determine whether more preborn lives are lost or saved. This position may be unpopular with many of America’s professional pundits who muddy the waters. But electoral politics have always played...

Today, the United States Senate voted on an anti-infanticide bill introduced by Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. The legislation needed 60 votes to pass, and it failed by a vote of 53 in favor and 44 against. The bill stated that “if an abortion results in the live birth of an infant, the infant is a legal person for all purposes under the laws of the United States, and entitled to all the protections of such laws.” The 2002 Born Alive Infants Protection Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush, established that any...

Among the absurdities I’ve heard during this election season are the following assertions: “It doesn’t matter who gets elected President – it’s been over 40 years since Roe v. Wade and abortion is still legal.” “Even if a politician says he’s pro-life and that he’ll appoint pro-life judges, nothing changes.” “Overturning Roe v. Wade would only be a symbolic victory.” Maybe you’ve heard statements like these from people who identify as pro-life.  They express a frustration with what some think is a lack of progress in protecting the unborn from brutal deaths. In fact, though, the above charges are...

Conservative leader Morton Blackwell keeps a picture of Leonardo’s model of a bicycle on the wall of his Leadership Institute. It’s his site gag--and a sight gag.Leonardo’s bike is a reminder that the great conservative philosophical insight—Ideas Have Consequences—is true only if people act upon it. You can sketch a bicycle and perhaps even build a working model. But we know it took four hundred years for people to start riding bicycles.Progressives don’t ever wait that long. They start acting upon their ideas immediately. The only trouble is: the ideas they believe in are not true.rogre Among the lies they believe,...

I would not want to be a student on a college campus today. The university campus is the closest thing we have to a fiefdom in what is left of 21st Century Western civilization. Violations of free speech and student due process have hit epidemic proportions. Contrary to popular opinion, the professors with tenure are not the principal problem. It is the administrators with qualified immunity. They are gods. They are untouchable. They thrive in ideological echo chambers where they are shielded from internal criticism. Any hope of reform must come from outside the walls of the institution. Today, I...

It is 41 years since the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision, effectively legalizing abortion everywhere in the United States. Ever since, it has been a source of controversy -- and confusion. Some of that confusion is owed to the fact that the opinion was written by Justice Harry Blackmun, the only one of America's 112 Supreme Court justices to sped most of his prejudicial legal career defending doctors, as counsel for the Mayo Clinic. Doctors, not women, were the targets of abortion prosecutions. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted last year, Roe "wasn't woman-centered, it was...

Get out of New York! That’s the message Empire State Governor Andrew Cuomo is sending to pro-life, pro-gun, pro-traditional marriage conservatives. The Albany Times-Union first highlighted remarks the governor made during an interview with Susan Arbetter on “The Capitol Pressroom.” He was talking about a division within the state’s Republican Party and compared it to what’s happening in Washington, D.C. “It’s a mirror of what’s going on in Washington,” he said. “The gridlock in Washington is less about Democrats and Republicans. It’s more about extreme Republicans versus moderate Republicans.” And then he told “extreme” Republicans where to go. “Who are...